Saturday, May 14, 2016

The following story comes from a remarkable out-of-print 1971 book called "I, Pig" and is subtitled "or how the world's most famous cop, me, is fighting city hall." The book was transcribed by Paul Neimark from taped recordings of Jack Muller.
I blogged some of Muller's thoughts on policing the Chicago conventions in 1952 and in 1968.

The following excerpt is the opening salvo in the book and helps explain events which shaped Muller's character:

For me, World War II began in 1928.
In 1931, at eight-and-a-half years of age I was stopped on the way to Hebrew school by a gang of Dago toughs and ordered to suck their pricks if I wanted to make it to schul that day.
In 1936 I had the toughest hood on the west side of Chicago tell me to get out of town within twenty-four hours or get dumped on a pile of ashes in the alley.
In 1943 I stood frozen while a horde of Japanese dive bombers spewed bullets between my legs, felt my intestines go to dry ice when we were torpedoed and dozens of my buddies died just yards from where I was.
But those times I knew how to fight. In fact, I learned goddam soon how to battle the world's dirt with the dirtiest fighting I ever saw.
But in 1928 I was helpless.

Joe Masseria
sat at the table and lowered his face to a full plate of fettucine. It was slathered
in butter and cream and covered in pecorino Romano cheese. He shoveled into his
mouth with his usual sophistication. Joe the Boss resembled a pig in almost
every particular. He ate like one. He grunted like one. Rutted like one.
Thought like one. Consume, consume, eat, eat, that is mine… mine I tell you.
Flecks of spittle and cream sauce flew through the air in hideous mist that
covered the area near the porcine Boss of All Bosses.

"Well hello young Mr. Ronald. What is that you have in your hand. You dirty, dirty little boy. Put that down. I have a gun. I will shoot you. Don't make me do that. It will hurt. Now put that back in your pants and be a good little boy."

She looks like a Mom in a Hallmark movie but she would be more comfortable on the Spice channel. Allegedly.

She was famous in another administration for trying to work in several positions under the POTUS. Or more accurately the POTUS wanted her to perform these functions but she demurred. She set up a website for other disappointed orifice seekers that continues to this day.

I am sure she will be on TV again soon as the campaign heats up and investigations by crack teams like the Washington Post will investigate the whole thing. Right.

Now people all over the world are seeing it too. They're not expecting something silly but that's what they're getting.

I'm just showing the page says the same thing, it scrolls down to 3X this many, all Julie Tauber McMahon suddenly all at once. They'll have to keep looking and do better than this to find out what they want to know about her. This isn't going to help.

'Her mood has brightened since. She knows there is an end in sight to her suffering and this has given her comfort.'....

Significantly, many of the mentally-ill patients had already been rejected for euthanasia by their own GPs. He explained: 'If someone has cancer and the prognosis is poor, doctors will shorten their suffering by euthanasia.

'But if you cannot see what a patient is dying of, or know when they will die — it could be many years ahead if the person is mentally ill — then the doctors find it more difficult to decide whether to end a life.'

So Pleiter's team offers to fill this gap. He got into the right-to-die business when his mother suffered a stroke at 80 and was left paralysed down one half of her body. She had always told him that if such an eventuality happened, she wanted to be helped to die.

. . . TGs (transgenders) have ambushed the debate and entangled us in a snare of such trivialities as the proper pronouns with which to address them, protocol as Byzantine and patronizing as the etiquette for addressing royalty. They insult us with the pejorative term “cisgender,” which they use to describe those of us who accept, however unenthusiastically, our birth gender, as opposed to the enlightened few who question their sex. Moreover, they shame us into silence by ridiculing the blunders we make while trying to come to grips with their unique dilemmas, decrying our curiosity about their bodies as prurience and our unwillingness, or even inability, to enter into their own (often unsuccessful) illusion as narrow‑mindedness.

[snip]

While I fervently support TGs’ rights to transition and to do so without fear of reprisal, I believe that the whole phenomenon of switching one’s gender is a mass delusion. For one, the physical manipulation involved in transforming oneself into a man or woman is apparently different in kind—or so the transgender community presumes—from the nips and tucks undertaken by the trophy wife or celebrity, anti‑heroes of a materialistic culture with whom the TG, having taken advantage of the same merchandising of the body promoted by commercialized medicine, bears a strong and unfortunate resemblance. The general public almost universally disapproves of plastic surgery and laughs derisively at celebrities who present a face “different from the one they rode in on,” as one commentator referred to their futile—and often ruinous—efforts to roll back the hands of time. The obscene trout pout of Donatella Versace, the misshapen nipples and oblong breasts of Tara Reid, the Joker’s grimace of Kim Novak, are all fair game for that most American and democratic of blood sports, the desecration of the rich and famous in tabloids and gossip blogs.

And yet what is the actual difference between Michael Jackson whittling his nose down to a brittle sliver of bone and whitening his skin with alpha hydroxy acid and arsenic in order to efface his blackness and the TG sanding down her brow bone and hacking off a sizeable chunk of her mandible in order to efface her gender? Why is the one decried as a racially reprehensible instance of self‑mutilation, self‑denial, and self‑loathing and the other extolled as a celebratory instance of self‑liberation? Why is it not only okay but valiant for Caitlyn Jenner to liberate her inner woman through rhinoplasties and laryngeal shaves while it is deplorable and pathetic for Michael Jackson to liberate his inner Caucasian through bleaching and cleft chin augmentation? When Rachel Dolezal goes to the Palm Beach tanning salon for her weekly $30 dip, she is committing the unconscionable crime of appropriating blackness (or, in her case, as the Gawker put it, not blackness but “Medium Brown Spray Tan”), but when Laverne Cox, one of the breakout performers on the television show Orange Is the New Black, slaps on a transdermal estrogen patch, she is lauded as a hero and role model. All of the arguments against plastic surgery—that it is dangerous, even fatal, often botched, and symptomatic of either extreme body dysmorphia or a lamentable effort to accommodate Hollywood’s chauvinistic ageism—can be leveled against those who transition from one sex to another. The trophy wife and the TG swim, it seems, in the same surgeon‑infested seas.

It's a long article, but if you really want to understand what is at stake, what the push is really about please read the whole thing. I found it eye opening.

“I just spoke to ops and called you reg line — we have to wait until we see each other b/c [the] technology is not working,” Mills said in another email sent at almost exactly the same time.

“Pls try again,” responded Clinton, a few moments later.

It’s unclear whether the two did connect or if they moderated any discussion they may have had to avoid sensitive topics while on an unsecure landline.

But the episode is likely to cause concern among critics of Clinton, who have previously accused her of resorting to unsecure forms of communication out of convenience, potentially jeopardizing sensitive information. Another email of Clinton’s, released in January, appeared to show her telling a top aide to remove identifying details and send a sensitive document through a “nonsecure” channel instead of via "secure fax."

“This drip, drip of new Clinton emails show Hillary Clinton could not care less about the security of her communications,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, in a statement releasing Thursday’s email. “How many other smoking gun emails are Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators in the Obama administration hiding from the American people?”

Fox News: The 84-page book “The Confessions of Congressman X,” is being shopped around as a game changer that gives readers a look into the lascivious lifestyles of politicians and provides a glimpse “at the dark side of Congress as revealed by one of its own.”

Mill City Press, the book’s Minneapolis-based publisher, says the name of the author is being kept private because Congressman X “wants to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.”

She was the one who introduced all of us young boys to computers. Sort of Siri's great grandmother. She always thought of herself as number 1 but her husband had a lot of number 1A's in his life. She had a long run and was a feisty oversexed lady to the end of her long life. If you liked Science Fiction you know her work. She chased after the Mister but not the Doctor.

In the 1980's a group of us used to Cruz
Colfax on Friday night. The fun was blaring the radio or current
mix-tape and laughing with friends. (and checking out the dudes)
We
would fight a bit over the choice in music. It was Chaka kahn, Prince,
The Motels, or whatever 80's or 70's band we were into. Avalon was not
cruzzer music.

So Trump is not the kind of guy who takes things lying down.
The Washington Post has announced that they have assigned 20 reporters to
search every aspect of his life. They are using a full court press that I am
sure they are not doing to Hillary. Now as you know the Post is owned by Jeff
Bozo who owns Amazon. Trump was ruminating. “Hmmmm he must be worried that I am
going to look into the tax collection issues with Amazon. Or better yet what
about anti-trust. Amazon is starting to dominate everything. Please tell me why
the monopoly of the Telephone Company was no good but Amazon can dominate every
aspect of on-line sales. The Justice department just stopped the Office Depot
and Staples merger because they control too much of the market. Is Amazon a
good prospect for an anti-trust investigation?”

There is another show in the Dick Wolf stable about Chicago called Chicago PD. The premise of the show is that crooked cop Sergeant Hank Voight is sprung from jail in a deal with Internal Affairs to head the Intelligence Unit and collect information on other crooked cops. His watchdog is Antionio Dawson the brother of firefighting Mary Sue Gabby from Chicago Fire.

Anyhoo when you watch this show they violate the civil rights of every suspect every episode. They beat on them, torture them, bring them to their cellar where they tune them up. Sometimes they even kill them and cover it up. Obviously how liberals like Wolf see the cops. He thinks thats how the cops operate. Mostly it is sloppy storytelling. It is much easier to beat information out of a suspect instead of the hard leg work and investigation that cops often have to do to solve cases.

Why is this important? The Faternal Order of Police is warning that Chicago is going to explode this summer. The level of disrespect and violence directed at the cops by the savages emboldened by "Black Lives Matters" have led to the cops pulling back. Not on the beatings and illegal interrogations that are isolated incidents at best. They are pulling back on normal interactions with the public that can lead to stopping crime. Community policing.

The Tiny Dancer is claiming that the cops have gone "Fetal." "We have allowed our Police Department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence" Rahn Emanuel said last year. What did he and people like Bill DeBlasio expect? That the cops are going to put their lives and their pensions and their families on the line to stop one savage from killing another. Emanuel doesn't care. Obama doesn't care about his hometown. The Black Lives Matters crowd support the criminals and think enforcing the law is racist. Reap what you sow. The liberal mindset illustrated in things like ChicagoPD has led to an agitprop agenda that has made effective law enforcement impossible. Every mook has a cellphone and starts a riot at every arrest. At every traffic stop. There is no margin for error. For human mistakes. You have to perfect every time. So safety first. It is a human response.

Chicago is going to burn this summer. The cops are going to pull back. Ferguson Rules.

Within a decade or so, Washington was transformed from a sleepy backwater (mocked by John F. Kennedy for its “Southern efficiency and Northern charm”) to a city full of fancy restaurants and expensive houses, a trend that has only continued in the decades since. The explosion of regulations led to an explosion of people to lobby the regulators, and lobbyists need nice restaurants and fancy houses.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that progress suddenly slowed down, but I don’t think so. Indeed, the Obama administration’s brilliantly successful policy for promoting private spaceflight ventures (basically one of benign neglect) can be seen as evidence that we can actually get the kind of progress we used to get, when we regulate lightly, like we used to. Who knows, if we regulated pharmaceuticals like we did in the early 1960s, perhaps we’d get as many major new drugs as we got in the 1960s. (“The time for a new drug candidate to gain approval in the United States rose from less than eight years in the 1960s to nearly 13 years by the 1990s,” notes Hanlon.)

Of course, excessive regulation isn’t just slowing technological progress, it’s also making us poorer. A recent study from the Mercatus Center found that the increase in federal regulation since 1980 has reduced economic growth by 0.8% per year — which over time means that the economy by 2012 would have been 25% larger, adding up to about $13,000 more for every American. The number would be much bigger, if they’d used 1970 as their baseline.

In a sweeping victory for LGBT activists concerned about the recent slew of so-called "bathroom bills," the White House on Thursday announced that President Obama would be issuing a transgender bathroom decree which would protect students in public school districts across the country. The decree, which is set to be delivered to schools on Friday, addresses fears some have expressed that banning transgender students from using the bathroom of their identified-gender could result in bullying or violence against those students. In a statement to The New York Times on Thursday evening, Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. reaffirmed the president's beliefs that transgender students were owed protections that the numerous bathroom bills circling state politics otherwise stripped. (read the whole thing)

I didn't listen. What am I masochist? I shut off the sound and fell mesmerized by her remarkably plastic face. I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it. She's incredible. An inspiration to Bell's Palsy sufferers everywhere. With facial exercises this habituated and this extreme she can avoid plastic surgery well into her hundreds.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

I walked around quite a lot and didn't see anything much worth photographing just then although there are interesting things all around like the little pool by Mad Greens, a cement block cut out like a sarcophagus with a cement body inside face down palms spread a bit like the back side of Han Solo in carbonite, it's a pool, like someone floating dead in a pool, or perhaps examining something close up, but all those things are civic and put there to try to be interesting. There are statues all over the place. Cows, buffalos, people men and women, out-scaled household utensils in primary colors, out-scaled toy horse on a chair, monoliths arranged in a group, metallic stonehenge, comic cowboys on roofs of buildings, obelisk, American indians, bronze horses, plus the architecture is interesting, more background than point of interest, save for details, and they'e not going anywhere. I never took out my camera. Past the lunch rush, circling back I ended where I started at Burger Fi, went in, took a stool at a table in the corner by the front window facing Broadway and snapped away here and there as foot traffic slowed considerably while I ate a burger and that turned out productive. Dozens of good photos of people walking by right where I sat without moving.

The whole set of photos is included with the hamburgers on my other site if you care to see them. These were put on Flickr and within two minutes I was pinged that three were marked favorite by somebody. But not this one. I got a few shots of this girl as her group walked by. Her whole group of three are this expressive.

That was a fun somewhat pervy voyeuristic thing to do, see people coming, oh, oh, get ready, eat a fry, lift up camera, back and forth, with all the inside diners behind me, I'm certain, observing or noticing what I am doing.

If I'm challenged I think my defense will sound like, "You know what? I got a GREAT shot of you. Would you like it?"

One group was taking selfie group photos before breaking up and walking past me. And I got great ones of them. They're adorable.

In Colorado when you go whitewater rafting on some rivers like the Arizona River and Brown River they have companies of rafters going by all the time for half day or full day trips. Photographers position themselves on a bridge over the rapids, the best part of the float when people are screaming and water is splashing dramatically and glistening artistically, and they photograph each raft that goes under them and then hasten back to the company office where rafts are returned and process the photos right there and have them ready to offer for sale by the time the trip having people return and the photos are all great. They're all perfect. They got their act down. They have to be great. They are always fantastic photos no matter who you are. People love these photographs of themselves doing something great and fun like that, right at the climax. Each person on each raft wants to own at least one photo once they see them. Honestly, where will you get another photograph of yourself being athletic like that? It must be set up in advance. They rake in cash hand over fist all season long. And the clients love it while never having agreed to be photographed.

Do you guys watch Chicago Fire. I like it because of the neat rescues and unique incidents that they copy in the Law and Order style. It is made by same guy who did all the Law and Orders. Now he is focused on Chicago. He started with Chicago Fire. Then he did Chicago PD. Next Chicago Med. Actors in all of the shows do cross overs all the time. It is filmed on location so it is quite well done most of the time. The crossovers are fun. I reminds me of one of my old favorites Emergency from the 1970's.

The only problem is the Gabby situation. It is a Mary Sue deal all the way.

A federal judge ruled for House Republicans on Thursday in their suit againstPresident Obama and declared his administration is unconstitutionally spending money to reimburse health insurers without obtaining an appropriation from Congress.

The judge's ruling, though a setback for the administration, was put on hold immediately and stands a good chance of being overturned on appeal...

The Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law," said Judge Rosemary Collyer, yet the administration has continued to pay billions to insurers for their extra cost of providing coverage for low-income Americans.

"Paying out Sec. 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution," she wrote. "Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one."

The sales networks learned the most qualified applicants did not make the best sales people. Collectively they are too stilted. Too inclined to get lost in unproductive discussion. Their experience is less educated and more openly enthusiastic people are better natural salespeople.

I am totally disillusioned. I can't believe that I put my faith in this reality star. That I could let myself be fooled by a flim flam artist. Many people warned me that it was just an act. An attempt to get attention and make money. That I should scorn the reality show values and circus like atmosphere that was so inimical to our society. I have lost friends because of my support of this phenomena. People who once bosom buddies have become bitter critics and perhaps even enemies.

Today it was revealed that it was all a fraud. That I was hoodwinked. Fooled. Flim Flammed. I am devastated.

First, Trump’s incoherence on issue after issue matters less than it would for the others. His crowd wants him, not necessarily his platform. They want the anti-pol. His chances of success depend on his ability to retain the magic he’s shown to date.

Second, although I’m talking about an intensely emotional and in many ways irrational phenomenon, it is driven by real and very rational contempt for the current ruling class.

Yes it’s funny that a man who doesn’t much care about religion is in large part a religious leader, but it’s quite a common historical phenomenon. And sometimes such leaders are triumphant.

"In particular, it cannot possibly help when an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flock into Rio for the Games, potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.

“All it takes is one infected traveller, a few viral introductions of that kind, in a few countries, or maybe continents, would make a full-blown global health disaster.”

Senator Tom Cotton has announced that he is supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump without reservation and would accept the nomination to be Vice President. He has been my pick from the beginning.

He is a war hero like John McCain so he brings Military Credibility. He knows what it is to go in harms way and will not be so quick to send our boys to die so they can nation build to flatter the egos of Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg. He knows what are the legitimate interests of the United States are in the Middle East and what are schemes to protect the Oil Interests of the House of Saud.

He is an expert on the deal with Iran and led the charge to have the Congress have a role in approving or more correctly disavowing this treaty. He stood up for the rights of Congress and I think he can guide Trump in his relationships with them. Trump is the polar opposite of Obama. They are both very arrogant. Obama is an imperious arrogance. He is better than you and either love him or you are shit. Trumps is a boisterous arrogance. You either love him or you are shit. But he can fight with you to the knife but then make up. He knows from Make Up Sex. Look at Megyn Kelly. Trump can work with Congress. He can load up a bunch of these greedy bastards and take them to Mar de Largo and get them to play golf and send in a few hookers and before you know it he has a deal. His arrogance is that he wants you to love him. A much more positive arrogance if you can follow what I mean.

Tom Cotton knows what a party is all about. When the people speak you should listen. You get behind the candidate. You advise him. You help him. You try to convince him to see things the way you do. You don't say my way or the highway. You don't demand that he change his views from the ones he had that won him the nomination to the ones that failed.

He is young. Personable. Experienced but not part of the foreign policy blob.

This is mail, but it is hardly private. It is one of those chain letters that offers a fiction with lacuna too glaring for its length, followed by brief homily, followed by brief sermon with advice on behavior both prescriptive and proscriptive. Finally, guilt trip.

To say, "I love you."

The story is soldier dies, has a funeral, friends gather around. He had in his possession a list of good things his classmates said about him. Some classmates are at the funeral. The list of good things said was an exercise his teacher had the class do, list all the good things about each student in the class. She compiled the responses and distributed the results. The boy grew, kept his list of good things said of him, died, other list havers reunited. Teacher cries.

Now, start telling people you care.

Now, do this by forwarding this message.

Now, you received this because somebody cared

Now, if you're too f'n busy to recycle this fictional story, you have to say you pass a lot of opportunities to tell people you care.

Now, remember, Karma's a bitch. What you put into the lives of others comes back.

Commentary: This boilerplate Democratic campaign strategy would be fine — perhaps even compelling – if deployed against a vanilla Republican candidate. Trump is, however, no Republican cast in the same mold as George W. Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. In fact, as Team Clinton was revealing its intention to attack Trump for his proposal to ease the tax burden on the rich, the news cycle was already dominated by Trump’s decision to buck Republican orthodoxy on taxes in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd.

In that “Meet the Press” interview, Trump signaled his willingness to surrender his opening bid in the coming fight over tax code reform (well before negotiations had even begun) by insisting that his cuts on the highest marginal rates will likely be pared back by congressional Democrats. “I have a feeling we pay some more,” Trump said of his fellows in the top tax bracket. “I am willing to pay more, and you know what, wealthy are willing to pay more. We’ve had a very good run.”

Despite Trump warning the Clintons for weeks that he intends to borrow heavily from self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ playbook, Team Clinton was unable, or unwilling, to preemptively reform their message and tailor it to Trump’s populist progressivism. Nor could they adapt and respond to a news cycle dominated by Trump’s remarks on taxes and the stunning departure they represent from typical Republican economic philosophy. If Democrats fear that Clinton’s team has ossified and grown complacent, this episode should confirm those suspicions.

Justice Department employees have given Clinton far more money than her rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Donald Trump, according to a review of federal campaign contributions for the 2016 presidential cycle.

The person in charge of Facebook’s Trending Topics section, which has come under fire in recent days over accusations that the social media platform deliberately suppressed news articles that were published on conservative websites, is a maximum donor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Tom Stocky, Facebook’s vice president of product management, issued a response to the report that was first published by Gizmodo by claiming that he has not found any evidence that the accusations within the report are true.

And this is a pop quiz. Surprise! No fair, there is no way for you to prepare.

How do you visualize the title sentence? It seems like there is nothing concrete there to visualize. You have to see it to say it. Such that when you show it the result will be accepted as the meaning of the sentence.

As a string of pictures, not a sentence, the essential ideas are, “he, know, wrong, continue, argue.”

And all that can be pictured.

He, that thing over there

know, a motion to the head

wrong, looks wholly wrong at the chin and so does the whole face.

continue, both thumbs pressing forward (this is where I differ with others)

argue, appears disputative between two arms

That’s how I’d say it.

But that is not how CODA say it, children of deaf adults, and it is not what is seen at large.

"Anyway he knows he’s wrong that he argues." This is how they say it.

Except her “that” means “still.”

I wouldn’t use the word “that.” This version of “that” is not natural to me while “continue” is natural.

Here “that” is a different word altogether, a different concept, she mouths exaggeratedly “ma” meaning “no change, “the same thing,”sort of “bully” the horns of a bull slapped on the palm while mouthing "ma," the same hand configuration and movement as the word “that” but more harsh. Here, “that” means stubbornly “still.”

I’d convey the same idea with “continue” shown stubbornly, a choice that marks it my way, my style.

"He know wrong continue argue." It seems clunky back into English from an eloquent string of visual ideas in sign and it means "he still argues though he knows that he's wrong."

I watched Hillary momentarily on television and I don't even know what channel it was, but I thought, give it a listen. She said, "Now I don't want to run a campaign of attacks, I want to discuss policy." Applause. "The American people deserve better than simple attacks back and forth, that needs to stop." Applause. She has a group of supporters with signs behind her on the dais, and an unseen crowd applauds between each prepared line. I cut her off. Then returned. "He attacked Megyn Kelly, he speak poorly about women on Howard Stern, Trump is ridiculous, not serious, he does nothing but attack..." She lodged several attacks on Trump's character and decried Trump always attacking and complained that's not the thing to do. She flatly and directly attacks and decries his constant attacking that shows his bad character. She has it both ways

Good luck with stopping that.

Who do you think will win that one?

Here is a video of Trump's last campaign speech at Eugene Oregon. He says all the same things as before with the only thing new is new people attached to his campaign, more heavyweight supporters and these fresh attacks from Hillary and fresh attacks on Hillary. Fresh to his campaign, not fresh to anything else. He covers all the attacks he knows are coming. They're arrived. There is only so much juice she can squeeze from them. He defends in the video and returns much harder attacks. There are two good places in the video, one near the beginning and another near the end and those together he covers what we've already discussed. He let's Hillary have it. And this is just beginning. Hillary Clinton describes Trump as disregardful of women and there is plenty of ammunition for her there in Trump's past, while Trump describes her as enabling her raping husband and with plenty more ammunition behind all that. Neither one is going to hold back.

I almost feel bad. Because this can be viewed as disregardful of women. I'm showing what I think Trump intends to do. I think he will do whatever it takes and it will take this.

The thing is, she keeps getting back up.

The source pic for the tractor and background is a Wisconsin tractor parade, and it's a beautiful thing to behold. It says, Lancaster, Stitzer, Preston, Fennimore WI. And there are a thousand tractors in a line.

Now for something else entirely.

As I was making dinner and all this was roiling my mind, pop, I was suddenly transported to my first weeks of work at the Federal Reserve Bank. Something emotional matches. An image opened of my first boss there, of him chugging down the long corridor with his gnawed pipe in his mouth and wearing his cowboy boots racing across polished stone floors. Old school, nose to the grindstone type. One day he slipped and fell right in front of us and he took a classic cartoon fall. Hilarious were it not so critical. His whole body went stiff and he spun in the air hitting his head, CRACK, loud enough to call all our attention louder than machines operating in the room. Right in front of a phalanx of clerks at their desks each with their ridiculous huge and fascinatingly antique adding machines that take wide rolls of paper and with full keyboards that go to 99 million. Everyone was stunned. A dozen people saw this. He could have been dead. Right there in front of us. Kyle wasn't the only character there of his type.

Old people can be very disrespectful to one another.

That old janitor walked right up to Kyle on the floor and angrily yelled at him for not heeding his sign and that doubly warped our minds. All of our minds, not just mine. We were dialing emergency and the janitor is chiding our boss as he lay stiff on the floor. Kyle turned out okay but the episode was harrowing and dire and hilarious to us boys two ways, and apparently I'll never forget it.

When President Obama first visited Japan in November 2009, he said he hoped he would one day visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States dropped atomic bombs during the very final days of World War II.

“The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency,” Mr Obama said at the time.

At least 140,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, when the city became synonymous with the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon on August 9 1945. Three days later, the US dropped a second atomic device on the city of Nagasaki and within a week Japan had surrendered to Allied forces. (read more)

A friend emailed a link to this video titled Think About It, that contains awe inspiring clips about Earth and life on Earth. All very high quality production clips like BBC's David Attenborough. Turns out the address I just pasted in is another YouTube video and that explains how these mass mailing or chain mailing type of things originate. It was a toss up with this scene and another of a dog rescue at sea. Poor thing is floating on an iceberg. Oh! I bet I can find that one too.

A research team at Stanford, for example, used an experiment in which one group of men heard a sexual-harassment policy before conducting a task with an unseen female partner.

The researchers found, compared to a control group, these men were more likely to believe “most people think both men and women are lower status, less competent, and less considerate,” and personally thought “everybody was lower in status.”

Another study of participants in a sexual-harassment training seminar found “male participants were less likely than other groups to perceive coercive sexual harassment, less willing to report sexual harassment, and more likely to blame the victim.”

So much for sensitivity training. These findings seem pretty obvious. Few people forced to read legalese or watch stilted programming about Johnny and Jane learning appropriate office behavior feel affirmed and inspired to be more respectful to others.

Rather, such programs tend to remind us of everything that’s wrong with our culture, with people assuming the worst of each other and forcing everyone to walk on eggshells lest they offend someone else. (read the whole thing)

If I tell you something in confidence, it's really not ok for you to tell your best friends. And it goes both ways.

The older we get, the less time we're willing to spend "chasing" you. If I'm interested, and you're interested, there should be no reason for you to still be playing hard to get and taking longer than two requests for your time to agree to a date. Either commit or tell me you're not interested.I'm 30. Dating at this age consists of "Are we doing this or not? I got shit to do."

mentioning how many guys are going for you/chasing you doesn't create the narrative of "oh damn, she's a hot commodity, better try harder" instead it's "fuck, chasing her seems like it would be a lot of drama, better skip this one"

If you bring us problems we will offer solutions. That is our way of showing that we have listened and that we care.

Just because we can't get an erection at a given moment, that doesn't mean we're not into you or that we don't want to have sex. It's not that simple.

In other instances, curators would inject a story—even if it wasn’t being widely discussed on Facebook—because it was deemed important for making the network look like a place where people talked about hard news. “People stopped caring about Syria,” one former curator said. “[And] if it wasn’t trending on Facebook, it would make Facebook look bad.” That same curator said the Black Lives Matter movement was also injected into Facebook’s trending news module. “Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter,” the individual said. “They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, ‘Yeah, now I’m seeing it as number one’.” This particular injection is especially noteworthy because the #BlackLivesMatter movement originated on Facebook, and the ensuing media coverage of the movement often noted its powerful social media presence.